American Revolution Quotes

Why can I not fight for my country too?

Away with your president! We shall have a king... the army will salute him as monarch; your militia will leave you and assist in making him king and fight against you. And what have you to oppose this force? What will then become of you and your rights?

The States separately have very inadequate ideas of the present danger. Party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the day, whilst the concerns of the nation are secondary.

The American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, it has often been argued, were fueled by the most radical of all American political ideas.

It turns out one of my ancestors fought in the Continental Army, so I was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution.

If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile.

That slow poison [slavery] is daily contaminating the minds and morals of our people. Every gentlemen here is born a petty tyrant, practiced in acts of despotism and cruelty.

In no obvious sense was the American Revolution undertaken as a social revolution.

A revolution is bloody, but America is in a unique position. She's the only country in history in a position actually to become involved in a bloodless revolution. The Russian revolution was bloody, Chinese revolution was bloody, French revolution was bloody, Cuban revolution was bloody, and there was nothing more bloody then the American Revolution. But today this country can become involved in a revolution that won't take bloodshed. All she's got to do is give the black man in this country everything that's due him, everything.

Remember, Sir, that [England] began the slave trade!

Mankind may amuse themselves with theoretic systems of liberty... but we can only discern its true value by the practical and wretched effects of slavery.

To cash paid for saddlery, a letter case, maps, glasses, etc etc etc. for the use of my Command: 29 pounds 13 shillings and sixpence... To Mrs Washington's travelling expenses in coming to and returning from my winter quarters, the money to defray that taken from my private purse: 1064 pounds, one shilling.

Let this sad tale of death never be told without a tear: let every parent tell the shameful story to his listening children, till tears of pity glisten in their eyes, or boiling passion shakes their tender frames.

Never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw even an elemental trait of painting or sculpture.

This is where the Continental Congress met over two hundred years ago during the American Revolution. So, Lancaster was actually the capital of our nation for one day in 1977.

A disunited people till the end of time, suspicious and distrustful of each other, [the Americans] will be divided and subdivided into little commonwealths... with no center of union and no common interest.

I fear we may live to see another revolution.

Even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror.

Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words.

The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge right or make good decision.

It would be a foetus of monarchy!

James Watt patented his steam engine on the eve of the American Revolution, consummating a relationship between coal and the new Promethean spirit of the age, and humanity made its first tentative steps into an industrial way of life that would, over the next two centuries, forever change the world.

Some of my ancestors fought in the American Revolution. A few more wore red coats, a few wore blue coats, and the rest wore no coats at all. We never did figure out who won that war.

The American Revolution was a vindication of liberties inherited and possessed. It was a conservative revolution.

It's going to be like herding stray cats, and the political leaders who can do it will be remembered as the same kind of geniuses who pulled off the American Revolution.

Whatever deficiencies the leaders of the American Revolution may have had, reticence, fortunately, was not one of them.

Make no mistake; the American Revolution was not fought to obtain freedom, but to preserve the liberties that Americans already had as colonials. Independence was no conscious goal, secretly nurtured in cellar or jungle by bearded conspirators, but a reluctant last resort, to preserve "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

I am now . . . on a subject, which fills me with inexpressible concern . . . . But as it has been a kind of destiny, that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking it is designed to answer some good purpose.

If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's.

A reading of the Declaration of Independence on the steps of a building is widely covered. The events that started the American Revolution were the meetings in homes, pubs, on street corners.

I was very strenuous for retaining and insisting on it [law of nature], as a resource to which we might be driven by Parliament much sooner than we were aware.

If you want to be a great American, you have got to understand Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, how the American Revolution happened. I think if you want to be a good citizen of the digital age, it helps to feel comfortable with both the people and the ways of thinking that created the digital revolution.

During the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentences together.

You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular; you are very much otherwise. And you can write ten times better than I can.

Several country towns, within my observation, have at least a dozen taverns. Here the time, the money, the health and the modesty, of most that are young and of many old, are wasted. Here diseases, vicious habits, bastards and legislators are frequently spawned.

Well, I am actually a daughter of the American Revolution

The die is cast. The people have passed the river and cut away the bridge. Last night three cargoes of tea were emptied into the harbor. This is the grandest event which has ever yet happened since the controversy with Britain opened.

The King has degenerated into a tyrant and forfeits all rights to his subjects' obedience.

For God's sake, take care of your men. If they fire, they die!

It can not be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ!

In all their wars against the French they [the Americans] never showed such conduct, attention and perseverance as they do now.

The progress of the American Revolution has been so rapid and such the alteration of manners, the blending of characters, and the new train of ideas that almost universally prevail, that the principles which animated to the noblest exertions have been nearly annihilated.

There are very interesting books about these events, for instance one by a very well-known American historian named William R. Polk called Violent Politics. It's a record of what are basically guerrilla wars from the American Revolution right up through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The times that tried men's souls are over-and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

These are the times that try men's souls.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations ... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.